For Syria, the contrast between the beginning and the end of 2024 could not be starker, apart from one perpetual constant: the continued occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by Israel.

Syria entered 2024 split into three areas of influence and fearful of being sucked into a regional war with Israel on behalf of Tehran. Two of the three areas are now united under the authority of what was formerly the armed opposition. Whatever the government that now emerges in Damascus, it will have to grapple with the challenges of rebuilding a state after toppling an authoritarian regime that lasted nearly 55 years.

The main squares in towns and cities across Syria filled with people cheering the fall of former president Bashar Al-Assad, who came to power 24 years ago. In 2011, his attempt to brutally repress a grassroots uprising drove the country into a 13 year-long Civil War that claimed nearly a million casualties and displaced half of Syria’s population.

In 2023, Al-Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League, and during that year he was working to restore Syria’s relations to normal with the rest of the Arab region. Only a few weeks before his fall, he attended the Arab-Islamic Summit meeting in Saudi Arabia, appearing confident that he had survived the region’s upheavals since 7 October 2023, just as he had thought he had survived the 2011 uprising.

In his speech at the summit, he called for regional and international action to restore the historic rights of the Palestinian people. Less than a month later, the Syrian people won a chance to claim their historic right to freedom too.

Although Al-Assad supported the Palestinian resistance in words, his regime did not actively engage in the war against Israel alongside Iran’s allies. The front along the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights remained largely silent while Israel launched its aggression against Gaza and then against Lebanon.

In fact, Al-Assad actively prevented resistance factions from fighting Israel from inside Syria. When Iranian-affiliated militias fired missiles into Syria in the early months of the war, Al-Assad tightened up his control over the south of the country to stop such activities in order to keep that front from flaring up.

He coordinated with the Russians to relocate the Iranian militias away from the border area, because Moscow also wanted Syria to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel.

Israel conducted more than 150 airstrikes in Syria in 2024 and over 25 ground incursions into the international demilitarised zone between the Occupied Golan and the rest of the country. It killed 25 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members, 60 Hizbullah fighters in Syria, another 60 fighters of different nationalities, and 222 Syrian regime troops and officers. The strikes also claimed dozens of civilian lives.

The Israeli strikes were intended to weaken the forces allied with the former Syrian regime, thereby making it more vulnerable. But rather than turn its guns towards Israel, this continued to strike areas held by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group.

In the days following Al-Assad’s fall on 8 December, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) exploited the chaos to seize and occupy more Syrian territory, displacing the civilian populations of the villages of Al-Hamidiyah and Al-Hurriya following a siege that deprived them of food, water and electricity.

The IOF also unleashed a massive wave of airstrikes across Syrian territory, targeting airports, military bases, security headquarters, military aircraft, tanks, weapon and ammunition depots, and warships at the port of Latakia.

After 250 strikes in just two days, Israel announced that it had destroyed all of Syria’s military capacities.

Israel had also carried out hundreds of strikes against Syria before the fall of Al-Assad. The most consequential was the bombing of the Iranian Consulate building in Damascus in April, killing Iran’s most senior officer in Syria, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the IRGC Al-Quds Force.

The incident nearly triggered an all-out war between Israel and Iran. In September, an Israeli airborne commando operation in Masyaf west of the city of Hama abducted Iranian personnel and seized documents from a Syrian military facility.

Israel also increased its strikes against Hizbullah leaders in Syria in tandem with its assault against Lebanon. Many were victims of the wave of Israeli pager-bombs that struck Lebanon in mid-September. At the same time, the IOF carried out more assassinations against Iranian field commanders in and around Damascus.  In late September, they struck a palace belonging to Bashar Al-Assad’s brother, Maher Al-Assad, commander of the 4th Armoured Division of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

While Bashar Al-Assad agreed with Russia’s request not to open a front with Israel, he did not comply with its calls to normalise relations with Turkey.

Moscow had repeatedly attempted to persuade Al-Assad to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to restore relations and create conditions favourable to the return of Syrian refugees. But Al-Assad had insisted that Turkey must withdraw its forces from northern Syria as a condition for a meeting to take place. Erdogan refused, determined to retain control of Syria’s northwestern provinces of Idlib and Afrin, while eying parts of the Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria.

The battle fronts in Syria had been relatively stable since the Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement in Spring 2020. The Syrian regime controlled Damascus and its vicinity, Homs, Latakia, Tartus, Daraa, Quneitra, Suwayda, and Deir ez-Zor. Suwayda and Latakia had witnessed intermittent anti-regime protests during the year in response to poor living standards, but they were violently suppressed.

To the northeast, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) controlled Hasakah, Raqqa, a part of Deir ez-Zor, and the northeastern Aleppo Governorate. The Turkish-backed SNA controlled northwestern Aleppo while Idlib was controlled by the HTS.

SUDDEN CHANGE: Then suddenly everything changed. On 27 November, not uncoincidentally the day after the ceasefire in Lebanon went into effect, the HTS and SNA launched the Deterring Aggression Operation, swiftly gaining control of the eastern Idlib province (Saraqib and Marat Al-Numan) before attacking Aleppo from all sides and then advancing towards Hama.

Initially, it appeared that the opposition forces intended to expand their control over Aleppo in order to force the regime to the negotiating table to hammer out a final resolution to the Syrian crisis. Turkey had clearly backed this operation, probably with the intention of creating a large “safe zone” in Syria for the return of refugees.

However, meeting little active resistance, the HTS and SNA forces continued to take more territory, while HTS founder and commander Abu Mohamed Al-Golani shed his nom de guerre and took back his original name, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, exchanged his jihadist attire for a military uniform, and adopted a new and more moderate rhetoric.

He promised safety to regime fighters if they withdrew from their positions and left their weapons and gave reassurances to religious and ethnic minorities in Syria regarding their personal safety and religious freedoms.

He also assured other Arab countries as well as the countries that backed Al-Assad – Russia, Iran, and Iraq – that the HTS and other forces had no territorial or political ambitions outside Syria and asked them not to send reinforcements to defend Al-Assad.

With this, the last regional and international stays of the regime fell away, enabling the opposition forces to advance without resistance into Homs and then Damascus, just as Al-Assad fled to Moscow. These forces also took the regime’s strongholds on the Syrian coast without significant violence. The military situation then stabilised, as government authority fell to the HTS-led opposition and Al-Sharaa.

The opening of the Al-Assad regime’s prisons and the release of political detainees that accompanied the opposition forces’ advances have added moving scenes to the narrative of liberation, victory, and the end of a despotic regime in Syria. However, the political and ideological identity of the bulk of the opposition forces has raised concerns over Syria’s political future, the state-building process, and the nature of the new state.

So far, the smooth transition from Al-Assad’s government to an interim government formed by Al-Golani/Sharaa, who headed the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), has contributed to the sense of calm, dispelling fears of chaos in a power vacuum. This temporary government is supposed to last for three months, during which a new constitution will be drafted. Syria’s current constitution and parliament have been suspended.

The new transitional government has undertaken rapid and reassuring actions regarding the economy and living conditions. The Syrian Central Bank announced that deposits were safe, and banking and currency exchange operations resumed just two days after Al-Assad’s fall.

The government also announced that it would transition to a “free market,” integrating Syria into the global economy. In projecting stability in the management of the economy, the new transitional government hopes to encourage Syrian refugees and expatriates to return with their savings and help to revive the Syrian economy.

Stability is also essential to attract investments for reconstruction, which will cost an estimated $300 billion.

However, the appointment of SSG Minister of Justice Shadi Al-Waisi as Justice Minister in the transitional government has raised concerns. The Salafi-oriented Al-Waisi intends to impose Sharia Law, as applied in Idlib, to the other parts of Syria, signifying the imminent clash between the theocratic rule that Al-Sharaa envisions and the civil citizen-based state that the secularist opposition aspire to.

The rules and procedures for forming a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution have yet to be announced. It is therefore uncertain whether it will be truly inclusive and work to guarantee the equal rights of all Syrians. However, if Syrians abroad respond to the transitional government’s call to return home, this will offer greater hope for participation by a broad spectrum of political orientations in shaping a new and democratic Syrian state.

Meanwhile, Israel’s bombing spree, destruction of Syria’s military capacities, and seizure of more Syrian territory which it intends to keep, remind us that the HTS-offensive and current regime change in Damascus could not have happened without Israel’s consent, a green light from the US, and Turkey’s backing of the SNA and HTS.

Pictures of Al-Sharaa entering the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus for the first Friday prayer after Al-Assad’s fall accompanied by the head of Turkish Intelligence (MIT) were telling.

Is Damascus just shifting patrons, from the IRGC to MIT? The Arab leaders should step up their efforts to embrace the new Syria and help it move forward. Instead of being dragged from one patron to another, Syria needs to be liberated from the constraints of alliances and sponsors of proxy factions so that the Syrian people can build a better future for themselves.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly